Reasons For His Madness
by CrowAggro
Summary: Staring deeper into the looking glass, Axel desperately searches for an escape, a release. But all he ever seems to find are the reasons for his madness.


Reasons for his Madness:  
Neko Condemned  
Disclaimer: I own nothing.  
Summary: Staring deeper into the looking glass, Axel desperately searches for an escape, a release. But all he ever finds are the reasons for his madness.  
T+

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Staring intently into the glass he stared fixedly at his reflection, completely enraptured by his mirror image. Grinning slightly, lips pulling gently back over perfectly white teeth, the red head leant closer to the mirror, almost trying to fall through it. Pressing his palms up flat against the reflective monstrosity, he gently nuzzled the cool glass before resting his forehead against it. Moaning gently, he slowly cracked open his eye lids, and gazed sadly at their aquamarine reflections. Whimpering pathetically he applied more pressure onto the glass, silently pleading with the crystalline gateway to let him through. It resisted. It always did.

Eyes burning with shame he peeled his face away from the glass, abandoning his childish notions of escapism for another night. He pulled away and made to walk away. Suddenly out of the corner of his eye he could have sworn he saw something flicker in the mirror. Swivelling round he gripped the blackened steel frame and stared vehemently into other side. After a moment of intense scrutiny he sighed dejectedly, taking up his previous position in front of the enormous structure and continued to scan the parallel world for any ways in.

Many painful hours later, he left the mirror more of a broken man than when he'd first become enthralled by it's power days earlier. Flinging himself violently onto his bed he let fatigue force his dulled eyes shut, and allow the dreams of paradise to blaze inside his mind.

In The Castle That Never Was, the building's other occupants ventured out of their rooms and congregated in the main hall. Around the table stood twelve shadow clad figures, their reluctance to even look at each other blazingly apparent. Eventually, one man lowered his hood and stared with uncommonly subdued amber eyes at the rest of the assembled figures. This morning there was none of the usual vigour and uproar that breakfast usually resurrected, instead only a muted feeling of apprehension. And everyone only had one name on their lips.

Shaking his head solemnly, blue strands of hair whipping about his face, number seven spoke up.  
"How do we fix him?" He asked, a false sense of calm settling over his words. Nobody answered. Not even Roxas. Saix growled quietly with frustration.  
"What do we do? Do we leave him? Do we use force this time? Do we replace hi-"  
"You can't replace him." Roxas interrupted, his voice oddly devoid of emotion. "You can't replace Axel. He's too….."  
"Unique." Xemnas finished. The rest of the group nodded in silent appraisal. And after a long moment of stifled opinions, the group dispersed. There was nothing left to say that hadn't already been said when Axel's depression first surfaced.

They didn't want to abandon him, but it seemed like he was giving them little choice.

He was awake again, studying the depth of his own eyes, watching as the waning light slowly engulfed his face in the shadows. Forcing his fingertips against the smooth surface until they turned a stark white, he again tried to push himself further beyond the looking glass. Laughing faintly in frustration he ran a hand through his mane of unkempt hair. Clutching his hair with one hand, he violently scraped his nails down the glass with the other. And once again he was adrift in a sea of old, unwanted memories. A recollection of a time before 'Axel' existed and before they had numbers for names. Dead memories from a time when he was human with a real human heart and real human feelings, not this dull, hollow ache in his chest.

He watched vehemently as the mirror played out the nightmare that was his final day in the land of the living. It was meant to be a birthday party, when really it was just a masquerade for something much more sinister. There were no adults. And his only friend there was the birthday boy. A child who's eyes seemed to hide a potential for something terrible. That morning when he'd awoken in his bedroom he'd had no inclination of the dark horror that was about to engulf him. He was only a child.

He was still just a child when the boy in the paper hat with the eyes of a mad man walked over to him. A child who didn't understand when his fingers were forced round the handle of the knife they'd used to cut the cake. He was only a child when his friend said to stick it in the backs of their heads.  
And he was still just a child when he stained his white shirt red and couldn't understand why he'd done it. And when he looked to the boy with the devil mirrored in his eyes all he saw was another child.  
And he didn't for the life of him know why he'd listened.

Behind him a portal to a world that wasn't even real opened, and out of it stepped a tall, cloaked man with hair as blue as the sea, and a gaze that could level a mountain. The man with the golden gaze stepped forwards and grabbed the young red headed child from behind, wrapping one arm around his middle and the other across his face. Shielding him. And as the unusually calm berserker carried the boy out of the room, he checked over his shoulder before quickly averting his gaze as unearthly flames raged behind him. Leaving the human world his grasp slipped, and through aquamarine eyes the child watched in horror as the flames cut through the birthday boy in his little paper hat, devouring the party and taking with it all traces that the little red headed child had ever even existed.

And when he awoke he was Axel, Number VIII, the Flurry of Dancing Flames. And instead of a knife he wielded chakrams. And instead of pain and confusion, he felt at home.

And then the haze faded and the boy who no longer was glanced down at his hands, and whimpered as bloody shards of glass cut deep into his skin. He stared into the looking glass that now stuck out of his hands at jagged angles and caught fragments of his own reflection in them. Wading barefoot through the thousands of tiny shards Axel suddenly dropped to his knees, and with blinding tears streaming down his cheeks he pressed his hands into the razor sharp splinters littering the ground.

Grazing his cheek against the shattered remnants of the looking glass he tried for the final time, incensed with a newfound passion, to break through into his paradise, to a world that would give him back his heart.  
And once again it failed.

And no matter how hard he cried and bled and pleaded, he was stuck.  
Because in the end, the looking glass had only ever been a looking glass.

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Neko Condemned: Wow this is a depressing one. Might get a little lighter I think if I continue it, because I really don't want to end it on such a depressing note….I dunno, what do you think?  
R n' R?


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